Masha Bucher, Silicon Valley VC and founder of Day One Ventures; went to X this week to address news reports documenting her close business and personal relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Bucher’s name — mostly under her maiden name, Masha Drokova — appeared in the latest dump of Epstein’s records more than 1,600 times, The San Francisco Standard reported.
“It made me feel like I could be safe from the regime, someone with power and connections who could shield me” from threats she linked to her home country of Russia, which she said she feared after getting her U.S. green card, she wrote in the post.
“I was naive, I didn’t dig deep enough early on,” he wrote about why he agreed to work with Epstein. “I believed his story that his previous conviction involved sleeping with a girl who lied about her age and trusted the endorsements of many investors and scientists.” It also apologized to its founders, team and investors, saying this situation “caused pain I never intended.”
The filings depict how Bucher — whose Silicon Valley career began in social media and public relations — agreed to become Epstein’s publicist in 2017, helping to rebuild his reputation after his 2008 sex-trafficking conviction and arranging meetings between him and various reporters. as reported by Forbes.
The documents show that Epstein supported and encouraged her in the early days of Day One Ventures. The firm has since grown significantly—as Bucher told TechCrunch, it closed its most recent fund, a $150 million third vehicle, in 2024, bringing its assets under management to $450 million.
Some of the more salacious details from the emails include that Epstein gave her money and a Prada bag and, in one case, asked her for nude photos — though there’s no indication if she complied — according to SFGate. Bucher is certainly a well-known VC in the Valley, having backed companies such as Superhuman, Remote, Worldcoin, and Truebill (which spun out of Rocket Companies in 2021), as well as others such as Valar Atomics.
The whole episode is especially awkward for a VC whose whole bad thing about founders is that she’s a PR expert who can help them with their public image. But this is not Bucher’s first confrontation.
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When he was younger, Bucher was known in Russia as a member of Nashi, a pro-Putin youth group. In fact, she was featured in a 2012 documentary called “Putin’s Kiss” — named after the widely circulated moment in the country when she kissed Putin on the cheek — as reported by CNN.
In her X post, she said she has since renounced her Russian passport, publicly denounced Putin and met with some of Epstein’s victims.
She’s certainly not the only VC whose name turned up in Epstein’s files, which isn’t surprising given how connected he was to some of the biggest names in technology. The documents do not show that Bucher broke any laws. However, she engaged in friendly correspondence with Epstein until just 11 days before his arrest in July 2019, Forbes reported. Epstein died in prison about a month later.
